Surgeon general issues health advisory over parental stress

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Wednesday reported that American parents feel stress more acutely and experience more mental health issues than their childless peers. Nearly half of all parents routinely experienced completely overwhelming stress, the report said. Only about one in four of their childless peers experienced the same levels of stress. Those high levels of stress preceded the COVID-19 pandemic, the surgeon general said. For the past decade, reports have shown parents experiencing higher levels of stress than childless adults, Murthy said.

Those high levels of stress pose a risk of evolving into deeper mental health issues, Murthy said. And roughly one in five parents are experiencing mental illness, according to numbers from 2021-2022. Meanwhile, some mental health conditions such as major depressive symptoms affect some parents disproportionately, the surgeon general reported. And parents struggling with mental illnesses are at a greater risk of passing those issues onto their children, Murthy said.

What’s causing all this extra stress? Parents’ common stressors include their family’s finances and their children’s safety, the surgeon general reported. Many parents worry about how to keep their families housed and fed, while others worry about their children’s safety on social media or in the classroom. Many parents also feel pressured to meet societal expectations for what effective parenting looks like, Murthy’s report said.

But many parents are making the hard task of parenting that much harder on themselves with social media, Focus on the Family’s Dr. Danny Huerta told WORLD. Huerta authored the 2020 book 7 Traits of Effective Parenting. Raising children is stressful, inflation hasn’t been kind to many families, and many parents are losing their trust in school systems, Huerta acknowledged. And while many parents stress about the threats social media poses to their children, they themselves are suffering from its harmful effects, according to Huerta.

Social media often leads parents to compare themselves with a doctored image of parenting, Huerta explained. Parents routinely pick up their phones and see social media influencers pitching creative parenting formulas that allegedly yield delightful results in their children. They then put their phones down feeling like they’re falling short in raising their own children, Huerta explained. But parenting strategies from social media won’t make children love their parents more, Huerta said. And there is no formula for good parenting, he added.

So how can parents feel less stressed and how can others help them out? Get rid of social media and focus on parenting your children, Huerta recommended. But if parents choose to continue using it, they should step into it carefully and be discerning about which voices they trust to influence their parenting decisions, he added. Huerta and the surgeon general both recommended parents make efforts to care for themselves.

The surgeon general recommended government programs to help parents make ends meet financially and obtain mental health care. Murthy also called for communities to make efforts to support parents—especially single parents. The church should also step up when it comes to supporting single parents, Huerta added. He urged churches and church groups to actively incorporate single parents into what is otherwise a very couple-centered culture. He also urged couples in the church to actively reach out to single parents in little and big ways, offering to help.

Dig deeper: Read Ericka Andersen’s column in WORLD Opinions about how Florida is trying to address parents’ concerns about social media and their children’s safety online.